


as if to strike sparks from them

by Benevolent_Atlas31



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: "NO", "he EATS people", "politically?", Alternate Universe - Hannibal (TV) Fusion, Alternate Universe - Scandal Fusion, F/M, Hannibal Lecter Loves Will Graham, Hannibal is the president, M/M, Poor Will Graham, Possessive Hannibal Lecter, Sassy Will Graham, Someone Help Will Graham, Tired Will Graham, Will Graham Knows, Will is the fixer, can i make it anymore obvious
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-10-05
Updated: 2021-01-25
Packaged: 2021-03-07 21:40:53
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26834593
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Benevolent_Atlas31/pseuds/Benevolent_Atlas31
Summary: “This is an emergency,” Jack tells him again. “He asked for you, specifically. Won’t let anyone else touch this until you’ve given your recommendation.”And thatdoesstop him.Because even if Jack had been lying up until now, he wouldn’t lie about this.+or, the Scandal AU in which Will is the best political fixer in D.C. and Hannibal is the Euro-centric cannibal he got elected President of the United States.Questions?
Relationships: (both temporary), (fake marriage), Bedelia Du Maurier & Hannibal Lecter, Bedelia Du Maurier/Hannibal Lecter, Matthew Brown/Will Graham, Molly Graham/Will Graham, Will Graham/Hannibal Lecter
Comments: 29
Kudos: 132





	1. There's a Girl

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hannibal: *breathes*
> 
> Will: My mind is telling me nooo. But my body? My body is telling me yeeeeaaah.

The call from Jack is expected, but that doesn’t mean Will can’t be disappointed. 

“There’s a girl,” he says, voice clear despite the hour. 

Will sighs and heaves himself into a sitting position on the too-large bed. “Or good morning, Jack, as they say in most cultures.” 

Somehow the phone translates Jack’s unimpressed glare. “There’s a girl.”

Will rubs the sleep from his eyes and glances at his alarm clock. “It’s 4:30 in the morning, Jack. This couldn’t have waited?”

“There’s a girl,” Jack says again, like it explains everything. 

In a way it does.

In an instant, Will’s brain supplies a simple chain of premises that lead to a very blunt conclusion: 

Even if there was some version of reality where Jack would consider cheating on Bella, there’s no way in hell he’d call Will about it. In fact, the list of scenarios in which Jack _would_ call Will was slim enough that he knew the answer before asking.

“You’re going to have to be more specific,” Will says anyway. “You’re looking at a girl? There’s a girl in your general vicinity? Women exist?”

(Toying with Jack isn’t something Will considers a great idea on a good day. However, he would have that Jack knew that it wasn’t a good idea to interrupt what little sleep Will manages, either, so he assumes they're even.)

“There’s a girl, Will,” Jack says. "An old patient of his causing trouble.” 

Will rolls his eyes. “You do realize that I don’t work for you anymore, right?”

He can hear Jack’s smirk through the phone. “Technically, you never worked for me.” 

“Whether or not that’s true remains to be seen. What we do know for sure is that I don’t work for you now and that it’s four-thirty in the morning.”

“Just because you don’t work for me doesn’t mean I can’t still check up on you,” Jack says, his tone measurably sweeter. "We're friends, Will.”

He laughs. “We’re _definitely_ not friends, Jack,” he says. “And even if we were, friends don’t casually call friends at four-thirty in the morning.” 

“Which is why it’s good you don’t think we're friends, then, isn’t it?” The phone crackles as Jack sighs into it. “This is an emergency. You know I wouldn’t call you otherwise.”

“Yes you would,” Will says. Because he has.

In the early days of Will’s exodus from the White House — notably, before his resignation was accepted — Jack called twice a day in the hopes of reeling him back in. He tells Jack as much.

“ _This_ is an emergency,” Jack tells him again. “He asked for you, specifically. Won’t let anyone else touch this until you’ve given your recommendation.”

And that _does_ stop him. 

Because even if Jack had been lying up until now, he wouldn’t lie about this. 

“He asked for me?”

“That’s what I said.”

“He asked for _me_?"

“ _Yes_.”

“He—“

“ _Will_ ,” Jack bellows. (He hasn’t missed that — the bellowing.) “You heard me, you know what this is, and you know this isn’t going to be easy. Just ... get your ass down here now so we can get a handle on this."

Will's slow on the upswing, struck dumb and dizzy with the prospect in front of him.

He recovers as quickly as he can, Jack's words hitting him in pieces. “No. It’s—“ 

“Four thirty-three now, actually,” Jack notes. “But I get your point. Just be here first thing in the morning.”

“Can’t wait." 

“The President of the United States appreciates your services," Jack says, sarcasm not doing much to wear on the novelty of the statement. "Oh, and Will?"

Will coughs. "Yes?"

"Good to have you back." 


	2. The Big Bad Wolf

“I don’t consider eleven o'clock first thing in the morning.”

Neither does Will, usually. But, _usually,_ his pre-morning line-up doesn’t include negotiating with Ukrainian mobsters and delusional farm tenders as a pregame for the President of the United States. 

Well, not anymore. 

He would never admit it out loud, but having memorized Hannibal’s religiously-kept schedule years ago had its perk some days. 

“I’m busy,” Will explains. “As you may remember, I don’t work here anymore." He jerks his chin in the direction of the West Wing. "Is he in there?”

Jack fixes him with a stern look. “He is not, as you very well know.”

With all of the obstacles Hannibal’s candidacy provided Will, the one he was proudest of overcoming was the religion factor. Hannibal probably couldn’t have differed more from the more attractive Kennedy brother but they’d clinched a victory for him anyway. 

It's Saturday before noon — Hannibal's at Mass.

Will smiles. “Great.”

They make their way to Jack's office. It’s as spartan as Will remembers it, barring a vase of fresh flowers, a framed photo of Bella on his desk, a few pictures taken shaking hands with foreign dignitaries, and various degrees scattered about the walls of the room. 

“I can see my nostalgia was misplaced,” Will says. “It feels like I’ve walked into a time capsule.”

Jack shrugs, distracted. “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it,” he says. He opens one of the drawers on the side and pulls out a small, unmarked file filled with clippings and other papers. “What’s our plan?”

“ _Our_ plan? I seem to have gotten the distinct impression that you were at your wit's end, Jack. This is a solo project.”

“I called you because it would be unseemly if it were to come out that any member of this administration took part in this process. That doesn’t mean that I don't intend to be as involved as I can to make sure you don’t screw us on this.”

Will scoffs. “You called me here because the President told you to call me here. I think that says more about you than you’d care to let on.”

“And you came when he called,” Jack shoots back at him. “Now what does that say about you?”

Will considers that for a moment. It’s exactly the line of thinking he’s been avoiding since he hung up on Jack and they both know it. Will prided himself on his independence and solitude, but the fact that, even after all these years, he’s still at Hannibal’s beck and call showed his hand more than he’d ever wanted to. 

He takes the file and opens it.

A simple face stares back at him, soft and smiling. It’s a badge photo, with a plain background and the woman's face washed out by the lighting. He can’t place her immediately so he knows she wasn’t on the campaign. But something feels familiar about her. There’s no name on the front of the folder, nor on the picture attached to the first page. She's a complete stranger, but Will feels like her name is _just_ escaping him rather than entirely unknown. 

He leafs through some of the pages and clippings: A college thesis and newspaper columns mentioning local scholarships. _Academic, bright._ A watercolor art print with a second-place county fair ribbon stapled to the front. _Creative but average_. Pictures of the woman sitting on park benches and long nights in.

_Lonely_. 

Will sighs. “I can offer you a primary consultation and that’s it. Give me until Friday and I’ll see what I can do.”

“That’s the best you can offer me?”

“I have my own clients who have their own problems— _actual_ clients, who pay me in more than late-night phone calls and disdain. This is a favor, Jack. You’re lucky I’m even here at all.”

Jack throws him an unimpressed glare. He folds his hands together and leans over the desk. “That’s the best you can do for _him_?”

Will glares right back. “We can’t always get what we want. Everybody needs a refresher on that once in a while, including and especially Hannibal.”

Jack holds his stare for a few moments longer before laughing. “You can say that again," he says and sits back in his chair. "Between you and me, he’s been particularly demanding. Lately, our Butterfly POTUS has turned his wings to claws."

“Oh yeah?” But Will doesn’t have to ask; he follows the news, if only tangentially. 

The man they got elected with a diplomacy tagline has been courting big red buttons and counterinsurgency tactics more than peace talks and mutual aid in the last few months. He doesn’t smile at the figureheads of allied States. He’s stopped doing photo ops in the Rose Garden. 

Will has never seen such waste. 

“Strange, now that I think about it," Jack ponders. "It's almost like he's been on the decline since you left. Some talking heads are calling him 'the beast' and you, his tamer. They say you’ve let something vicious off its leash.”

_If only they knew._

“I’m sure the other side of the aisle adores that,” Will says evenly. 

“NRA calls twice a day to see how long before he’ll give,” Jack says. “Say they wouldn’t mind diverting donors to the reelection campaign if something leaks about him disarming before a State dinner. He’s upsetting the base, Will.”

Will sneers. He goes to a reply that that isn’t his pig and this isn’t his farm or some other sanctimonious bullshit when it all dies in his throat. Another voice, intimately familiar, creeps into his head and starts to whisper. 

**_Reckless. Throwing votes away out of spite. A China doll outline that was made for me to fit so perfectly in and I will destroy it unabashedly to get back that which was taken from me._**

A design, _tasteless_ , and not his own.

He stands and sticks his hand out to shake. “Friday, Jack. I assume the fax is still the same?”

Jack looks up at his hand but doesn’t take it. “He’ll want to see you.”

The design gets clearer, the voice closer. 

_See, Will. See. I’ve laid a branch for the chrysalis_ _—_ _you’ve come back to me._

“My people will call your people.” He swipes the folder, pivots, and swings the door open.

He hears Jack call after him, “Most people use email.”

“I don’t,” and lets the door fall shut behind him. 

He doesn’t even make it around the corner. 

“Mr. Graham?”

Will stops short, trying to calm his breathing. 

_Something vicious off its leash._

(He dressed up the big bad wolf and locked him in grandma’s house, hungry.)

He turns to look at the aide, who’s panting a little from jogging to catch up with Will. He’s just taller than Will is and probably half his age. An intern, maybe, or someone’s assistant. He’s new to D.C. and hungry for the power it offers him. All Will wants to do is shake him and scream at him to go home. _I’ve watched this city use kids like you for toothpicks. You won’t make it the rest of the year._

“Yes?” Because he's a professional. 

The kid is almost shaking. “The, uh ... Mister PO— I mean the Lecter—”

Will sighs and the kid's jaw clicks shut. “What does the President want?”

“He, um … He’s asking for you." And then, " _Please_. He told me to say please.”

_Of course, he did._ Usually, Hannibal's "manners" protocol served as nothing more than the occasional, overdressed annoyance. Sometimes it was refreshing, especially to visitors from countries who had customs they weren't used to being acknowledged by Americans. Now, though, it had Will caught between a murderous rage and a chuckle.

He looks up, just past the shoulder of the twitchy aide.

There, in a meeting room, Hannibal's shaking hands with a governor whose name escapes Will in the hallway. He's smiling, the room in front of him clearly full of others who were waiting and reporters. If he honed in, he could almost hear the flashes of the cameras going off in bursts. But, when he looked to the man's face to see him staring back, all sound disappeared in a vacuum in Will's mind. 

He and Hannibal lock eyes. The shift in the other man's demeanor is nearly imperceptible, but even from this distance, Will spots it: the minute widening of eyes, the tightening of jaw, the _posture_. 

Hannibal sees him and Hannibal's world freezes for a moment. He's visibly recalibrating, and Will would've loved to revel in messing the man up a little if he wasn't stuck in the same process. 

He looks the same, or nearly so. Barring an acceptable gauntness about him that came with the presidency, Hannibal looks exactly like he did two years ago, standing on the presidential seal in the Oval while Will handed over his resignation letter. The look nails him in place now the same way it did then, and the vibrating aide is pretty much the only thing grounding him in whatever reality that exists without Hannibal at its center. 

He comes back to himself in pieces. Eyes first, and he looks away before Hannibal does. His arms wrap around his middle, tucking the folder to his chest; his legs start to shuffle sideways down the hall. 

Finally, his mouth figures out what the hell is going on. "Please tell the president I'm busy."

But even as he continues down the hall, he can feel Hannibal's eyes on him. Even as he walks through security gates and parking lots, he can feel the folder get heavier, like it's resisting a gravity center in the White House. (It's the same center he's got somewhere buried in himself, as much as he tries to deny it.)

Even when he makes it back to his office halfway across town, parks, and puts his head on the steering wheel with the folder in the backseat, he can feel everything slot back into a place he didn't know still existed. It's _yanking_ and _tugging_ and _gnashing_ back into a two-year-old wound that was irrevocably _open_ now, despite Will's best efforts. 

They've both caught each other out, and now it was only a matter of time before they collided together and blurred again. 

(He’s back now with an empty basket and the wolf is starving.)


	3. Enough

The folder is thin, but it's all Will needs. 

It's enough for him to start an evidence board. To run an initial trace for a new file and to need two fingers of whiskey to understand how the _fuck_ he's supposed to manage to unknot this mess.

_Miriam Lass_

FBI, of course. Or, former, anyway, because was there anybody in that House at this point who wasn't? (FBI-turned-White-House-aide under Jack Crawford's wing, and wasn't that a story Will knew only too well? Two years later and Will and Miriam Lass stare back at each other divided by the time-space continuum and paper, slowly amassing problems of each other without the other knowing.)

She was pretty. Young, but not inappropriately so. (Will has about seven years on her, not that he was counting.) Bright, but not exceptional. Two failed LSATs before moving to the academy, where she managed barely-passing scores in her core context classes. Time better spent doing Jack's bidding, Will guesses. 

Not that he cares, of course. All this, while Will got to curate the most powerful man in the free world to his image. 

Which may or may not collapse under the weight of the woman in the dossier.

"Your face will end up staying like that if you aren't careful."

He looks up. Beverly has a mug of tea in one hand and a thick pile of folders clutched in the other, face pulled tight at the eyes and corners of her mouth. 

She's got bad news. 

"And here I was thinking it was my rugged good looks that kept me so homely and approachable," Will says, gesturing for her to sit in the chair across from him. 

She opts to stand behind it instead, tossing the folders onto his desk. "You forgot, didn't you?"

"I suppose I wouldn't know if I had."

"The negotiation? We have to be uptown in a half hour. Assuming we want to beat rush hour, we'll need to leave, like, twenty minutes ago."

"Is it really imperative that we're there on the hour on the dot?"

"Assuming we don't want to be murdered in a way that won't be recognized by the state, yeah. Will," she says, urgent now. "We're three mil short with no support from the embassy. We fuck up on this and it's our ass, you get that, right?"

He grimaces. "Don't worry, I've got it handled."

"Do you?" Her tone is accusatory? "You fall off the grid for tweleve hours and now you're back with _this_. I'm worried about you."

"Don't be."

He sighs. She's right, of course, and he's not exactly being fair by keeping this from her. Any other person, and he could celebrate the fact that he does special favors for the President of the United States with his coworker-subbordinate-friend person. (Any other _world_ , and he would be doing things and he could know _peace_.)

But that's what happens when you get Hannibal fucking Lecter elected to office — you don't get to have your cake and eat it too when you refuse the man who bakes the cakes. 

"Yeah, while you get your coat on, I'll just sit here — _not_ worrying, or whatever," she says, grabbing a magazine from his coffee table and finally sliding down into the chair. Will starts to grab his coat from the wardrobe when she hums, absentmidedly. "Oh, and I've got Zeller grabbing the new recruit tonight while we're gone."

His fingers tighten around the coat collar. "The _what_?"

"I told you we had someone coming in today. I figured this maybe wouldn't be the case to have them shadow. You know, given the very real possibility we could get skinned and vivisected. Might be bad for the Graham mythos you keep alive and well."

"Might be," he says, starting to move again. "Since when do we have a new hire?"

"Since you told me to hire someone? An email," she says flippantly, running her hands across the page featuring coach covers. "You sent me resumés two weeks ago and I've spoken to you about it like three times now?"

Will vaguely remembers this. He remembers passing mentions of the vacant corner office since Zeller and Price merged, as well as the need for an errand runner in the last few months. But nothing hinting at new hires.

Thinking on her words more though, Will hasn't even _considered_ looking at resumés. While they were in quite the demand swiftly after Will's exit from the White house, they'd just stopped living out of the red as of a few weeks ago. He'd made it clear to the other three that he had no intentions to expand the firm any larger than the four of them for a while, and he thought they were all in agreement. 

Appreantly not. 

"Anyway, you told me to hire someone and I did," she tells him, flipping vigorously through the kitchen goods section. "Only one good candidate on the shortlist, how did you manage that?"

_Huh._

* * *

They get the job done, in the end.

But Will's distracted.

It's not the way he likes to do things: less than what's expected, what he can produced vs. what was promised. An uncrossed T is just an L, after all, or something other another that ends up with him getting . . . not what he wants.

It's a natural cycle of the job — you win some and you lose some.

But that's the problem.

The diplomat's baby will be back in her crib tonight. He and Beverly are now and will hopefully remain unperforated by bullets for the foreseeable future. And, if he's played his cards right this week, there should be lukewarm Chinese food in the door shelves of his fridge when he gets back home.

They can't count this as a loss, because it isn't one. 

Well, not technically.

He's technically still got the Miriam Lass folder burning a hole through his desk drawer, waiting to be read and relegated to the less pretty parts of Will's brain for a good stew. He's still got too-nosy coworkers who need to earn a living wage, which means (likely) more international incidents dealing and more favors to Jack, who has somehow already managed 17 missed calls to his phone since their chat this morning. 

And Hannibal. 

( _Empty baskets and w_ _olves. Doe-eyed trainees and opulent marbled floors. You wish for a time when you didn't dream of the feel of his hands when that pretty little skull breaks upon the overdressed sediment._

_And secrets. Always, **always** secrets)_

Yeah, he still has Hannibal. 

It's all he can do to not simply combust in his seat on the drive home. It's all he can do to not roll down his windows, free the papers of Miriam Lass' dossier to the humid D.C. wind and just keep driving until he hits the coast. 

Instead, it's up to full-volume Tammy Wynette and the thought of Winston whining alone by his food bowl for several days to stop him from a _final merge_ into the lane of traffic opposite him across the concrete barricade. 

It works, well enough.

Well. 

Enough that he at least makes it through his front door before the papers go flying. 

"Will?"

_Huh?_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thoughts?


	4. The Trail (pt. 1)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> How Will makes Hannibal the most powerful man in the free world in six steps

_**I. He didn't mean to** _

It starts as a joke, honestly. 

Well.

It starts as Will humoring Bella, really — starched undershirt and clip-on tie. He manages a line-free suit jacket from a box of things he wore to his dad's funeral. The cookies he brings are store-bought and repackaged in a homely Tupperware container he doesn't remember buying, and he even goes to the trouble of putting vaseline on his incisors in an effort to make himself look more approachable. 

He goes to Jack's annual Christmas soiree.

Before Jack threw his hat left, right, and center into the political arena, it was a party Will that could count on to be fed, watered, and generally ignored at until Jack had his fair share of mulled wine and decided to show off his favorite protégé.

 _"Nobody could grade a paper the way he could?"_ would joke a good-natured guest from the Bureau. 

_"Nobody could be the smartest guy in the room like he could"_ or some other such bullshit like that. _"I'd never seen it before and I doubt I'll ever see it again. We have a telepath on our hands, ladies and gentlemen."_

And usually, that would be that. Maybe some questions from curious minds who'd already heard about Will through the grapevine — psychiatrists, Bureau-heads, the like. But in the end, Will could usually make it out relatively unscathed and firmly under the wire. 

But that was four years ago. Will, who had only come to the parties in the first place anyway out of a social obligation he didn't understand, started missing the parties when he had the first real excuse to.

The first year he declined, he'd been recovering from a Thanksgiving GSW to the chest. The second, he was in a different state, hunched over a line of bodies hardened by decomposition and wax, dressed like antique dolls. The third and fourth year, he simply hadn't wanted to go, and nothing about the increasingly thick stationary or lace-embroidered edges of the RSVP card swayed him anymore towards cordial acceptance. 

The evening in question, Will spends hugging the wall of Jack's foyer to form. Campaigning has changed everything about the evening:

Mulled wine is now champagne. Ugly sweaters are now couture cocktail ensembles. The baby grand piano usually being played by a tipsy Jack has been pushed to the border of the room in favor of a harpist and a cellist to be congregated around. There is no pork option. 

Some guests remain the same. There are several directors from the Bureau that Will is able to recognize and even a handful of Jack's college friends the man was always so eager to parade Will in front of. 

But now where there might have been lowly lab techs, there are senators' interns and policy aides. Where there might have been Jack's booming laugh to punctuate a raunchy joke or story, there is now only acquiescing hums and a staunch sobriety. Congressmen and lobbyists dot the room. 

Everything has been sterilized, and surprisingly, Will finds himself instantly more out of place and bereft than he ever thought possible. 

It's like Jack can smell it on him. 

"Will!" he booms. "I'm so glad you could make it."

The room parts for Jack as he makes his way through it, and though Will's always passively accepted the vastness between his size and Jack's, he's never felt quite so cornered as he does now. 

He edges his lips behind the vaseline. "Hi, Jack."

The man claps him on the shoulder when he gets close enough. "Bella and I were just talking about you. She'll be happy you decided to grace us with your presence."

(It's discreet, but Jack starts walking with Will pulled tight under his arm — a concerted and obvious effort to embed him further into the room.)

"I had the night," he says casually. "I figured I'd stop in for a few minutes."

"Now, that won't do."

"It's a Thursday night, Jack. Take it or leave it."

Jack hums noncommittally. They make it to the other end of the living room before Will is able to shake the other man's arm from his shoulders.

It helps that every time they pass someone with even the slightest sway in D.C., Jack has to exchange a new set of pleasantries. Every warm body, it seems, is a receptacle for a pitch about some spending bill or a parroted message about a new environmental initiative. 

At the very least, it takes the pressure off of Will, for which he's grateful. If there's anything he's exceptionally good at, it's staged socialization. Will knows how to smile at the right time. Knows when to lean in conspiratorially and nod in appealing increments. 

But Jack is heavy-handed. He gives where there is no one to take. He has a tendency towards slowness and ass-kissing where he should be sharp and chaste. 

_This_ bothers Will, or more accurately, it bothers the people Jack is trying to sell to so much that it seeps into Will's consciousness. Stop after stop, Will's shoulders hunch and his spine stiffens. Watching Jack do this is reminiscent of Lucy with the football or falling facedown on a runway.

It's the seventh stop with a military contractor and his wife that Will snaps. It's bill that would require a change to energy-efficient bulb replacements in government-owned buildings, and Jack is focused too much on the husband: benefits to VA hospitals and PTSD treatment plans, lower productivity costs counterbalancing an increase in installation, _equitable gas emissions._

The couple is visibly edging away from them when the light catches on the wife's wrist. Suddenly, Will can see it fall like dominoes in play set.

"Jack?"

He doesn't even hesitate. "Hm?"

"Tell them about schools," he mutters. 

Jack does, and it's like a light switch. The wife goes from vague discomfort to rapt engagement in less than a minute. She seems to hang on Jack's every word, and as her attention funnels to Jack, her husband's goes to her in a vacuum. There are some questions, but in the end, both shake Jack's hand and swear their support wholeheartedly. 

When they walk away again, Jack is quiet but smiling, obviously pleased.

He nicks a champagne flute from a passing server. "I knew this was a good idea."

"What?" 

"You being here tonight," Jack answers. "I've always thought to float some of these by you before, but you've never seemed interested."

Will sighs. "I'm not. I'm even less interested in watching you do it badly."

Any normal person would throw the the champagne in Will's face as they have on several occasions. Jack, however, just laughs and downs the rest of it and smiles again. "I have missed you, Will."

"Hm."

"I haven't been entirely honest with you. I was actually hoping to get your help with something." 

Will just raises an eyebrow, doing his best to keep his features passive and calm. 

A Jack with ideas asking him for help has never exactly been good for Will in the past. At Jack's behest, he routinely pretzeled his brain and poured his blood, sweat, and free labor into cases he never got credit for. In the end, all he got was an upped Zoloft dosage and a shitty half-page recommendation letter. 

As always, Jack seems either unaware or unbothered of Will's internal musings. "I've been working on garnering support from big pockets around town," he says. "There's an old colleague of mine — ours, actually — who's been looking to do some campaigning and I think he'd be a shoe-in with a little polishing. He's taken some hits in the polls and, I mean it, Will, we have our best guys on this stuff. They just can't—" 

"Just spit it out, Jack."

Jack smiles again, a bit chastised but still that same self-satisfied _punchable_ smile and says, "Do you want to make a president, Will?"

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Could I have simply kept these all as one chapter with 7 different parts? Yes.   
> Is it excessive to separate these part for part? Yes.   
> Do I care? Desperately.   
> Hotel? Trivago.
> 
> Note: not all of them will be this short! It's just been a while and I thought I'd make sure you all knew this was alive and well. Let me know what you think!


End file.
